Trump hotels will not verify foreign visitors
Document says policy would “impede upon personal privacy”
The Trump Organization will not attempt to comprehensively identify foreign government profits tied to its hotel business, according to a company policy document provided to Congress, raising concerns about compliance with a constitutional ban on U.S. government officials accepting gifts from foreign powers.
The 40-sentence policy, released Wednesday by a key congressional watchdog committee that had requested it from the company, states the Trump Organization’s hotels will “rely on known and identifiable source data” to identify which hotel patrons are using foreign government money.
But the policy indicates Trump properties will not verify whether individual customers are representatives of foreign governments on foreign government business.
“To fully and completely identify all patronage at our properties by customer type is impractical in the service industry and putting forth a policy that requires all guests to identify themselves would impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand,” states the document, titled “Donation of Profits from Foreign Government Patrons.”
The policy document was provided by the Trump Organization to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in response to its inquiry in late April asking a lawyer for President Trump to turn over records connected to his plans to donate business profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. The committee’s inquiry cited a USA TODAY report in March in which a Trump Organization spokeswoman said no donation of hotel profits from foreign governments had yet been made but would be made at the end of the calendar year.
According to the policy document, the plan applies to profit generated from foreign governments’ patronage from Trump’s wholly owned hotels, resorts and clubs as well as its managed hotels and condominium-hotels.
The company will not make exact calculations of the profit generated from each customer using foreign government funds, according to the document, but instead will generate estimates.
“To attempt to individually track and distinctly attribute certain business-related costs as specifically identifiable to a particular customer group is not practical,” the document says.
In a letter to the oversight committee also released Wednesday, Trump Organization Chief Compliance Counsel George Sorial said the policy has been distributed to all general managers and implemented at each Trump Organization hotel, golf course, social club and winery location.
The plan to donate the profits was designed to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between Trump’s leadership of the federal government and his family’s vast business empire. The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause prohibits U.S. officials from accepting gifts or titles from foreign states without congressional approval.
In a letter Wednesday to the Trump Organization, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the oversight committee, said the policy “raises grave concerns about the President’s refusal to comply with the Constitution.”
“Complying with the United States Constitution is not an optional exercise, but a requirement for serving as our nation’s President,” Cummings wrote. “lf President Trump believes that identifying all of the prohibited foreign emoluments he is currently receiving would be too challenging or would harm his business ventures, his options are to divest his ownership or submit a proposal to Congress to ask for our consent.”